


How About A Drink?

by Umpleby



Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:40:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23031853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Umpleby/pseuds/Umpleby
Summary: Elnor’s right about the tension, but it’s not sexual tension.What the Captain was really thinking....I watched several times before I noticed he doesn’t give any information away to her, but places his questions very carefully.
Relationships: Agnes Jurati/Cristóbal Rios
Comments: 14
Kudos: 39





	How About A Drink?

When the EMH pings him, he knows something’s up. The holos love to talk to him, so when they send him a little electronic note without showing themselves...very odd.

As he watches the medical feed on a loop without blinking, his brain free-falls into the dark deeps it goes to when it can’t process reality anymore. He doesn’t know what time it is when he surfaces, but he still can’t bear what he’s seen. 

He takes his ball and practises for long, long minutes until he loses all track of time once more. And then, when he’s thrown the damn thing away in frustration, he decides to do something he’s sworn never to do again, and drink himself into oblivion.

Agnes _killing _Maddox. He shakes his head._ Agnes _killing Maddox. What had she done that she needed to atone for?__

____

__

____

__

And guess who’s standing right there when he turned round. The plan comes together in his head at that moment. Don’t give anything away, _chaval _, he reminds himself.__

____

____

Rios knows when a woman’s on the hunt and trying to disguise it. If she’s going to use him for sex, he’s going to seize that bull by both horns and find out whose side she’s really on. It damn sure isn’t Picard’s.

“How about a drink?”

“You can talk to me, tell me anything, you know that, right?”

He knows how to gentle a woman like a skittish horse he has to lead to water.

Come on, he thinks, spill. It’s bothering you, so spill!

She doesn’t spill.  
Yet.

But with that kiss, she wants to. Oh yeah.

He’s right. She knows she’s making a mistake sleeping with him. A mistake the entire crew need her to make.

He can’t help being tender to her though, kissing her, stroking her face. The image of his dead captain intrudes, again. They’re both murderers. He’s not judging her. He just has to stop anyone else from getting killed on his watch.

He searches out her feelings, and she doesn’t lie about those. It rings like a bell inside him, the enormity of her confession in four words. And he’ll absolve her, like a good priest, if only she’ll admit the rest of it.

He plays coy, making sure she walks into the trap. Are you sure? he asks, so she thinks it’s her decision, her idea, when he knows it’s really her desperate need to sedate the rampaging monster of guilt inside her. He knows what that feels like too.

When he’s sure she’s sound asleep he pings the computer to record every sound she’ll make through the night. He’s too keyed up to sleep himself, but the one thing his court-martial taught him was the importance of evidence. He tucks his hands behind his head and settles down to listen.

As she wakes in the morning he tries to hide the weight of his knowledge, but one look at him and she rejects his offer of breakfast, vanishes as soon as she slips into her clothes. Maybe she read the set of his shoulders, the clench of his jaw.

Later, on the bridge, Elnor calls it, watching how she refuses to meet his eyes. She knows he knows, and she’s thinking and wondering and it’s coiling her up like a wind-up toy. 

She can’t know that she’s already said everything there was to say. He’s damned if he’s going to let her fulfil her promise to this Commodore and kill the second synth at the cost of her own life - and what matters more - all their lives.

Hence the way he looks at her; steady, not judging, watching and hoping that she’ll turn away from betrayal. 

But she can’t quite meet his eyes.


End file.
